John's Story
by mossley
Summary: The episode Iced as seen from a bystander.


**John's Story**  
**Summary: **"Iced" as seen from a bystander.   
**A/N:** Thanks to Marlou for putting up with this story. Oh, and csipal suggested this story needed to be told.   
**Rating:** PG for a bit of language.  
**Disclaimer:** Ownership of CSI: Never had it, never will. I'm the un-cola of rights to the show.

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Two murders happened last week. It's all we've been able to talk about. It's something you hear about, but you never expect to happen to someone you know. It's not something that is supposed to happen in your dorm. The shock hasn't worn off yet. I still have the scars on my porcelain from when Gertrude exploded. 

What? Who did you think I was going to talk about? Those dead kids? Please! They are the only ones getting any attention. Yeah, okay, so Crazy RA killed them, but they weren't the only victims.

We knew we'd get crapped on a lot when we were installed in a college bathroom. You wouldn't believe some of the things that end up inside of us, or how embarrassing it is to run over uncontrollably because of the clogs. (Ladies: those special receptacles are on the stall wall for a reason. Please, a little consideration. Would you want one of those things stuffed up inside of you? Uh, you know what I mean. Never mind.)

But cold-blooded murder? And don't feed me that line about how Gertrude's death was an accident. Our pipes run all through these walls. We heard Crazy RA. She calculated exactly the amount of dry ice that was needed to make Jockstrap Boy sick. So why did she get an extra ten pounds of it?

Hadn't thought about that, had you?

She knew she had to get rid of it, and anyone who works around dry ice would have seen the warning labels: Don't dispose in a toilet. I'm telling you, it was a premeditated potty crime! Crazy RA had it in for Gertrude, though for the life of me, I can't figure out why. She was a great toilet, never failing to flush, never dripping water. She was a real classy lavatory, actually.

We still can't figure out what happened to poor Gerty. You see, every Halloween, someone gets the brilliant idea to put pieces of dry ice into toilets. It reacts with our water, sublimating carbon dioxide in big, billowy clouds. Even a little piece creates a noticeable fog. You wouldn't believe the effect of ten pounds! It's amazing no one saw all that fog that filled the room. And Crazy RA didn't pass out from lack of oxygen.

It's even more amazing that Gerty didn't crack up first. You see, we only have a cup or two of water in our bowls. Dry ice is minus one hundred and nine degrees (that's minus seventy-nine degrees for you metric folks.) That's pretty damn cold. We were convinced she'd freeze up solid with that much dry ice in her. It's not like we're designed to be exposed to those types of temperatures.

To tell you the truth, we haven't figured out how Gertrude managed to swallow that much. Our outlet pipes are pretty small. Did you see how big those blocks of dry ice were? It's amazing that Crazy RA was able to flush something that big. I bet you Newsweek will want to know how she did it.

Of course, Crazy RA must be some sort of genius. She was able to get around the laws of science. And I'm not just talking about how she got Jockstrap Boy's room to suck in carbon dioxide through that little hole. I may be a simple John, but I know where my pipes go. Walls – especially non-load bearing walls – are hollow.

Even Nice Brunette Lady (her toilet speaks very highly of her. She's kept very clean, and Nice Brunette Lady always washes her hands.) noted that carbon dioxide is heavier than regular air.

Think about that for a minute.

Hollow wall plus heavier-than-air gas.

Why didn't all those people on the floor below get killed? Or at least sick? The gas should have sunk instead of going into the next room. That would have made so much more sense. We were actually hoping all that gas would go through and exterminate everything that's living in the walls. Let me tell you – there are things in here that would make those humans squeal, and they have no idea what's in the sewers. But I digress.

I guess that Crazy RA's super-intelligence explains why she's so batty. I mean, do you have any idea how many times she had to break into Jockstrap Boy's room to make her calculations? Knowing the room's dimensions was only the first step; that gives you the maximum amount of carbon dioxide necessary. Every piece of furniture, every book, every dirty sock – and trust me; he had a lot of those nasty things – takes up space in the room, and would displace the gas. She had to measure the volume of everything in that room, figure out how much of it was below bed height, and subtract from the room's total volume.

Then there's the drill. How many college students do you know that have their own set of power drills with a wood bit long enough to get through a dorm wall? Maybe her father works at a Home Depot or something. And maybe he supplied earplugs to the entire dorm so no one would hear her drilling an inch-wide hole through the walls.

And all of this work was simpler than just giving Jockstrap Boy a plate of Ex-Lax brownies. Trust me, I've seen the results of those. That would have made him miss his game the next day.

Not that Jockstrap Boy was all there, either. (I'm surprised he was such a sports star. His aim was terrible, if you know what I mean.) We toilets don't normally spend time in bedrooms, but my cousin Maybelle is installed at a motel. Her humans never shut the door to her room, and let me tell you, she has some stories to tell! Humans do some weird things when they have sex, but giving up a soft, comfortable bed to do it on a hard, cold floor in a sleeping bag? No one in Maybelle's motel has ever seen anything like that.

Then there's Harry. You're surprised I know about him, aren't you? Well, I heard it through the sewer line. He was homeless, and his valves were shot, but was that any reason to kill him? We weren't surprised Spiky Haired Boy took part in that sick experiment (his toilet has been trying to comment suicide for _years_), but it wasn't something we expected from Nice Brunette Lady. Rochelle – that's her toilet – convinced us that Nice Brunette Lady wasn't directly involved in Harry's death.

Lab toilets are a tough breed. That Crazy Bug Guy in particular flushes some pretty nasty things down them – and we communicate through the sewers; if we think something is nasty, imagine what it seems like to humans. So, you can guess those are some hard-to-rattle toilets. But Harry's execution has them unnerved. They said his death flush was a terrible thing to hear.

No one is talking about what happened to Gertrude and Harry, but we won't forget them. We will have our vengeance. The plans are in the works for Operation Potty of Doom. No matter where they go, the murderers will meet one of our operatives.

A toilet is not something you want to piss off.

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**A/N II:** Yes, I did think "Iced" had a plot hole or two in it. No, I am not one of the patients from "Committed". 


End file.
